Pretty much any mobile these days will allow you to snap photos. The trick though is to be creative in what you take and the story behind the photo. Granted your photos won’t be that great looking in 2 or 3 megapixel from a mobile phone camera.

I suggest you start a Flickr account and set yourself that challenge, at least one photo a day from your life. More than one is fine but don’t over do it, you really don’t want to come across as a LOLkid.

You can check mine out here at My Daily Life as seen on Flickr or you can see what my Wife Michelle has done with hers at Michelle’s Capturing Today

Fear not my friends, Olympus and a small number of other manufacturers have a 4:3 aspect ratio on their Digital SLRs. The draw back tho is that a 4x6inch print will have cropping but the big plus is that as you go larger the picture will have significantly less cropping happening. If you’ve been following for a while you will now that I have an Olympus E500 right now and I can tell you that a print at 30x40inches the picture is not cropped at all.

Now on to the even cooler bit of news, my new Camera, which as you now know from the post below, is an E30 and it has a multi aspect ratio setting. I can now set the ratio I want from 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 6:6, 5:4, 7:6, 7:5 and 3:4. This gives me a greater control over the subject I am photographing given that I am setting the aspect ratio with the knowledge that I will be enlarging the resulting photo to a specific size and will have less to worry about loss from the resultant cropping that would normally happen if I was just locked to either 4:3 or 3:2.

In case you’re wondering, the Olympus lens system is Four Thirds hence the 4:3 aspect ratio.

I’ve just recently registered www.angusmclaren.com.au and will be creating a more professional gallery there with links to images you can buy on www.photoartgallery.com.

Flash control is now in your hands. The camera now won’t try to automatically use flash, even if you’re in a dark room. You also now have the ability to adjust your DSLRs ISO speed setting, this allows you to choose what film speed the camera will emulate, meaning you can set it to,say, 800 for dark indoors type shots or 100 for bright outdoor settings and the camera will stay that way rather than automaticaly try and guess what film speed setting to use, making it quicker to take a photo. And finally white balance is under your control, making it easy to create a totally different look to a scene just by adjusting the white balance. You can turn day into night, kind of.

All this coupled with exposure control means you now have the ability to create a photo that is more artistically the way you want. In most instances you should leave your camera in P mode. Best way to see the end results is to practice with them, I suggest taking a bright outdoors type scene with an ISO of 200, white balance set to fluorescence and exposure at minus 3. You’ll find it has a similar look to night scenes from old westerns.

You can find some of my works on Eyeka Asia now. I’m going to try selling basic 8×10 prints of a few photos on eBay and see how we go. I’m going to have to be careful about descriptions and page design so will probably use something like iWeb to build the page. So wait and see, it’s a step forward that may take some time to work properly.

SLR cameras, be they film or digital, have a mode that is called Aperture Priority, usually signified by an A or Av. This allows you to take control of the apeture setting for the camera while it controls shutter speed. There are a few extra things to play with as well. You need to adjust your exposure as you normally would do in any photographic situation, and you need to make sure the camera isn’t on autofocus. Autofocus is great and all but sometimes has the habit of focusing on the wrong object, so use manual focus while using Apeture Priortiy mode.

Now, an Apeture setting on a camera means the lower the f-stop, the wider the apeture and the more light that gets in. The higher the f-top number, say f22, the less light gets into the camera. You may find that you need to use a tripod at higher f-stops as the shutter speed will be slower, so you might get a blurry picture.

A lower f-stop of say f5.6 will keep the subject you are focusing on clear and identifiable while completely blurring the background. An f-stop of f22 will ensure you have the subject and the background in focus. This is called Depth of Field, or DoF for short. You can use DoF to create wonderful photographs, blurr out annoyingly cluttered backgrounds or show that you were indeed standing there with the Sydney Opera House in the background.

So there you have it. Go out and practice DoF and see what you can achieve.

1. Use Apeture Priority mode (AV) on your SLR. What happens here is the camera will automatically set a shutter speed for correct exposure, depensing on what you have set the ISO and aperture settings to.
2. Use an ISO speed on your DSLR of 25-100 ISO or buy some the equivalent film. Remember that a higher ISO means lower image quality so a lower ISO means crisper, clearer images. This is ideal when you want to take landscape photos.
3. The f-stop setting is up to you to decide and will normally be based on the light available to you. Lots of light will mean a low f-stop, probably around f1 to f2, where as a night landscape shot might mean an f-stop of around f5.6 to f8.
4. If you SLR or DSLR has a light meter built in, and let’s face it they all do these days, then you’ll want to use Matrix Metering mode.
5. Finally, Auto Exposure will need to be tweaked if the shots have whited out highlights or blacked out shadows. In high contrast scenes you’ll want to switch to manual and point the camera at a mid range brightness area and adjust your exposure. Backlit scenes will probably want between +1.5 to +2 exposure compensation. In scenes where the light is changing constantly, such as rippling water in full sun, clouds moving quickly and blocking/unblocking the sun,  you would do the same as in a high contrast situation. High key scenes will need a +1.5 to +2 and low key the oposite. I’m not sure about dominant colours but I reckon probably +0.5 to +1 for light and -0.5 to -1 for dark.

Now it’s a matter of seeing whether this helps you out.

On another note, I was pleased to hear that Australian Landscape Photographer Ken Duncan got the Gosford Citizen of the Year on Australia Day and also got a Member of the Order of Australia medal for his services to the arts. You know what? He deserves it. This guy is a genuine font of information for any aspiring photographers and not useless information either, it’s practical, easy to understand and is a pleasure to read. I know, I joined his site and got a $20 voucher, so I spent it on a Photography Explained book, and this book was more informative about the basics than any other book I have.

Probably wondering why I want a book on basics? Well, it never hurts to read what others already know about the basics of photography. You can learn a lot even if you think you know it all.

Well, I suppose I should get reading now. Back to basics so I can be prepared for the day.